Descendants tell stories of Black Kettle massacre

Tuesday, February 1st 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

CHEYENNE, Okla. (AP) -- On a snowy night 132 years ago, a Kiowa warrior witnessed Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry attack a Cheyenne village on the Washita River. The man, Trailing The Enemy, happened upon the village of Black Kettle by chance while on a hunting trip, his grand daughter, Carnegie resident Martha Koomsa Perez, said.

His story is one of a number of 24 oral accounts of the attack in which dozens of people were killed that the Oklahoma Historical Society has collected in the past year for the Washita Battlefield National Historical Site. "My grandfather decided that he was going to go hunting and looking for some kind of food. As he traveled west, he came upon the village of Black Kettle. As the snow was falling, he had noticed tracks, the hoof prints, of the cavalry men, the soldiers, because the Indians didn't have no horseshoes at that time, and he noticed the hoof prints. He made a place to stay and fixed it up and then he went on into the village. He had tried to tell them what he had seen, but you know, to no avail. They wanted him to stay and join in the celebration, but he refused and said he had to go on because he already prepared a place for himself up there in the hillside," Perez recounted. "I guess just about dawn there was just a loud commotion all of a sudden, and everybody was just screaming. He could hear gunfire, and he just jumps up, he grabs his bow and arrow, and just runs out.

As he's running, he sees these women and children running toward him, and they're being chased by the soldiers, so he gets his bow and arrow out and he wards them off." Trailing the Enemy survived the attack.

Sarah Craighead, site superintendent, said organizers hope to use the information obtained from the $30,000 oral project for its historical interpretive presentations. "We realized a lot of elders were dying," Craighead said," and we wanted to make sure to get their stories documented while they were still living. This project will give us information so that we might better interpret the site for our visitors. Now the people who come here can hear the stories firsthand, and I think that will make the site come alive."

The historic site includes the site of Black Chief Kettle's village, Custer's command post, and troop and Indian positions discovered during a November 1995 archaeological survey. Custer said more than 100 were killed, but the count on the number is uncertain.

Bob Duke, a site attendant at the Black Kettle Museum in Cheyenne, estimates the number of Cheyenne killed at around 50 to 60. Craighead said she can envision exhibits where the recountings collected by the Historical Society may be showcased. "One of the things the Indian descendants wanted was for the story to be interpreted from their point of view and in their language," Craighead said. "So I can see where a person might be able to push a button and hear a story in Cheyenne and then in English."

Indian historian Mary Jane Warde was called on by the Historical Society to work on the project. She consulted with a number of researchers and historians and adopted courtesies and methods before the interview process began. "We were very conscious about how we approached the elders," said Warde. She said some people required a blessing before they could talk. "No one turned us away. We were absolutely thrilled with what we were able to document."

The information marks the first time that a project has been dedicated solely to the Cheyenne side of that 1868 event. Colleen Cometsevah tells the story of her grandmother told her. She tells the story because it needs to be told and because it is about real people.

Amithneh, Cometsevah's grandmother, was eight or nine at the time. She was asleep in her tepee with two younger siblings -- a sister who was "about five or six" and a brother who was "not quite two years old." "She (Amithneh) said it was just mass confusion; you couldn't hear anything, anybody. She said the women and children were screaming and crying and shooting and the soldiers on horseback were just riding every which way.

And the men were shouting to each other, and everybody was just running. And we followed our mother," Cometsevah said her grandmother recalled. "I heard my mother call my name. As I turned around I saw my little brother just tumbling head over heels. And it knocked the wind out of him, and my sister ran to pick him up. And I ran to my mother and tried to raise her up. I just lifted one arm, and I could already see her eyes were already glassy. And she said, 'Take care of your brother and sister. Don't look back.' And she said, 'I had to leave her and take my little brother by the hand. I looked back to my mother and she had her face in the ground. I knew she was dead. She was shot in the back.â€